2 the Date of Plato's Symposium1 K. J. DOVER I. the Upper Terminus

The Date Plato's of Symposium1 K. J. DOVER I. The Upper Terminus makes Aristophanes say (193al-3) : xml npo 'rOU... EZ· lato , < VUVLvuvl ,8i 8' 8L,81&e ot a8vxvav&81ximv uno1<& ToGro6 P rgv a?<px(crO'YJ{.lev81?pxia0%yev Ozo5,0eoV, xoc6ocrc?pxm0&<cp 'Apx&8eq 1<& Amxe8miyovimv. Aelius Aristides (II p. 371 Dindorf) saw in the simile a reference to the dissolution of Mantineia by Sparta, an event fully described by Xenophon HG v 2.5-7 and datable to 385/4 (cf. D.S. xv 5.3). Most commentators have agreed with him; and since the occasion portrayed in Smfi. is Agathon's first theatrical victory, gained 2 in 416 (Ath. 217 a), the anachronism is remarkable.2 Wilamowitz (Platon ii5 [Berlin, 1959] 177f., cf. i3 [Berlin, 1962] 291 n. 1) protested against this interpretation; the anachronism, he said, is unparalleled, and Plato does after all speak of 'Apx«8E5, not of Mantineia. Wilamowitz did not deny that Plato's simile was prompted by the dissolution of Mantineia, but he believed that Plato meant us to think of the treatment of Arkadia by Sparta after the battle of Mantineia in 418, which would have been fresh in every Athenian's mind at the time of Agathon's celebration. For Wilamowitz, then, the upper terminus of Smp. was not the point at issue; Plato's literary technique was. Mr. H. B. Mattingly, however (Phronesis iii [1958] 31ff.), regards the simile as so apt a reference to the events of 418/7 that he dissociates it altogether from the dissolution of Mantineia and leaves Smp. to be dated, if it can be dated, on other grounds. Mattingly's view commands a significant degree of assent,3 and the upper terminus of Smp. is now a live issue. I propose to argue that 193 a 1-3 can only refer to 385/4 and cannot refer to 418/7. 2 During the Archidamian War Mantineia, like Tegea and the rest of Arkadia, was a member of the alliance led by Sparta (Th. iii 107.4, 108.3, 111.3). In 423/2 Tegea and Mantineia fought each other, both having their own (presumably Arkadian) allies (iv 134). By the time of the Peace of Nikias Mantineia had subjected some of the Arkadian communities to her own (v 29.1, cf. 33.1-2, 69.1). She was still an ally of Sparta, but she defected in the summer of 421 to become an ally of Argos (v 29.1). In the winter of 418/7, after the Spartan victory, and after the treaty between Sparta and Argos which prescribed that all cities in the Peloponnese, 'great and small', should be autonomous (v 77.5), Mantineia came to terms with Sparta and abandoned her rev <6xemv (v 81.1 ) . Xenophon HG v 2.2 describes these terms as 'thirty-year but his narrative shows that during the Corin- thian War Mantineia, like Tegea, was an ally providing troops for the army which Sparta led iv 2.13, 4.17). What Sparta did to Mantineia in 418/7 was to reassert and ensure the autonomy of those communities which Mantineia had for a time subjected. What Sparta did to the Arkadians as a whole could be described, so far as the evidence of Thucydides goes, by saying that she reimposed, under her own leadership, the unity which the rift between Tegea and Mantinea had broken five years earlier.4 8101xilew is not an appropriate word for this process. Two items of evidence, however, have been regarded as presenting another side of the coin. (i) Tegea, which in 421 had resisted Corinthian and Argive attempts to seduce her from Sparta (Th. v 32.3-4), seemed for a moment in 418 likely to come to terms with Argos, under the imminent threat of attack by a powerful army (v 62), and the possi- bility of Tegea's defection brought the Spartans quickly on the scene (v 64.1-3). (ii) The coins which earlier in the century had been struck at Heraia, bearing the legend 'Apxm81x6v, ceased about this time.b Let us now for argument's sake assume (a) that the threat of defection by Tegea was as serious as the Spartans thought it, (b) that it reflected not simply a desire for autonomy or a transference of allegiance to what seemed an effective new hegemony but the stirrings 3 .

Load more